This year we were able to use the proceeds from our annual conference to help three professionals attend the Research Data Access & Preservation (RDAP) Summit. Held in conjunction with the Information Architecture (IA) Summit, RDAP explores themes such as open data, data infrastructure, metadata, and data preservation. The RDAP community brings together a variety of individuals, including data managers and curators, librarians, archivists, researchers, educators, students, technologists, and data scientists from academic institutions, data centers, funding agencies, and industry who represent a wide range of STEM disciplines, social sciences, and humanities.

The attendees wrote up their experiences to share with our readers. This account is written by Renee Walsh of University of Connecticut:

Attending the RDAP summit in Chicago was a great experience for me. I appreciated the diversity of speakers and viewpoints. As a new data management outreach librarian, it was valuable for me to be able to speak with my fellow librarians who have similar positions at other institutions. Having worked previously as an intern with the City of Boston’s Department of Innovation and Technology on their open data website redesign and communication, I was very interested to hear from Tom Schenk, Chief Data Officer from the City of Chicago. His talk was very engaging and he told many interesting data stories that stem from the development of a vibrant and engaged civic technology community in Chicago.

One of the goals with collecting large amounts of municipal data is to use data analytics to improve problems in the city that stem from infrastructure and also to improve the lives and health outcomes of Chicagoans. The goal of much of the data analysis is to predict future problems more quickly and with greater accuracy. Another goal is to prevent problems from occurring in the first place. For example, Tom Schenck said that underground city infrastructure is hit on average every 60 minutes. A 3D model of underground city infrastructure helps to decrease and prevent contact damage to underground infrastructure like pipes and wiring. The city has also created a heatmap of rodent complaints. Using data analytics comprised of 31 different factors that correlate with rodent complaints over a seven day period, the city can predict where in the city the next increase in rodent complaints will occur. In a similar way the city can also use data analytics to find the food establishments with the highest possibility of risk of food poisoning. Using data analytics, the city is able to speed up the rate at which they can predict food violations by 7 days, which is important in preventing food poisoning in food customers. Schenck also mentioned that the computer code for this model is open source and available on Github. Other projects tackled by the cities data analytics include predicting where West Nile virus may occur, predicting where e-coli may occur on city beaches, and the Lead Safe project which aims to reduce children’s exposure to residential lead paint. The Clean Water project was created thanks to about 1000 hours of volunteered time from Chicagoans involved in the civic tech community. According to Schenk, the project used open science that is fully reproducible and available on BiorXiv.

In addition, I enjoyed many of the talks from university data management librarians. Andrew Johnson from the University of Colorado talked about defining the role of the library in an institution’s research data management. He referenced SPEC Kit from the ARL on data curation. He asked the question, “are we doing things because we can or because we have a good reason to be doing them ?” He cautioned against preservation for preservation’s sake. Finally, Andrew thought the library plays a unique role in the university, because it is the only place that understands the big picture of scholarly communication.

There were also many talks about FAIR data, which is an acronym for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable. In talking about big data, Ayoung Yoon mentioned the 3 Vs: volume, variety, and velocity that characterize big data sets. Wendy Kozlowski from Cornell University’s ITS, talked about the development of a usable and interactive data storage finder. I thought their website was very impressive and well thought-out.

On my last day at RDAP, I particularly enjoyed the workshop titled, Building with the Carpentries. It was an overview of how to get involved with the carpentries at your local institution. I also had the opportunity to meet and talk with Tess Grynoch and Julie Goldman about the New England Library Carpentry community. In conclusion, I really enjoyed my trip to the RDAP summit in Chicago. I particularly enjoyed speaking with fellow research data librarians from other university institutions. It was interesting to observe and ask about how the roles vary at each institution depending upon its needs, priorities, and organizational structure.

This year we were able to use the proceeds from our annual conference to help three professionals attend the Research Data Access & Preservation (RDAP) Summit. Held in conjunction with the Information Architecture (IA) Summit, RDAP explores themes such as open data, data infrastructure, metadata, and data preservation. The RDAP community brings together a variety of individuals, including data managers and curators, librarians, archivists, researchers, educators, students, technologists, and data scientists from academic institutions, data centers, funding agencies, and industry who represent a wide range of STEM disciplines, social sciences, and humanities.

The attendees wrote up their experiences to share with our readers. This is the first of those accounts written by Allison Gofman of Tufts University:

Thank you NEASSIST for supporting my attendance at RDAP 2018! This was my first time attending RDAP. I graduated Simmons SLIS this August and began as Social Science Data Librarian at Tisch Library at Tufts shortly afterwards. As I talked to new colleagues about how to learn more about different aspects of my job and pursue professional development and engagement, my coworker Kristin Lee immediately mentioned RDAP. She described it as an opportunity to learn a huge amount about supporting research data in a short period of time, and a welcoming, collaborative group of people who were enthusiastic about collaboration.

It was as great an experience as I had hoped. The keynote by Tom Schenk, the Chief Data Officer of Chicago, was an excellent perspective on the value and use of data. Since I support our Urban and Environmental Planning department as a Liaison, I took copious notes of content and websites to bring to my department, and also joined the entire room in laughing at struggles that unite folks working on sharing and reusing data across disciplines and jobs. “Please cite us! (DOIs help.) We need to track impact. People don’t cite online data for some reason…”) [https://www.instagram.com/p/BgluLUHhpAZ/]

Many panels and discussions between sessions discussed the role of libraries in research data services. It was illuminating to see the many projects and strategies different institutions are taking with different resources available. There was a range of options from “I’m one person with a few hours a week among 10,000 other tasks” to “we have a team of 6 people doing this full time.” One lightning talk that stood out was Jamene Brooks-Kieffer from the University of Kansas Libraries, who talked about “Playing in the Sandbox: A Year of Data, Tools, and Analysis Inside the Library.” I really appreciated the idea of playing as a research methodology for exploration with an openness to failure and wrong paths. The acknowledgement of the role of power and hierarchy in collaborations felt crucial, and the talk left the audience enthusiastic about building empathy with our researchers.

By far the stand-out session for me was “Underserved Data Communities: Understanding Access & Preservation Bias”. Reid Boehm talked about transgender medical data, Siân Evans and McKensie Mack talked about gender and race in Wikipedia through their initiative Art + Feminism, and Jaquelina Alvarez & Hilda T. Ayala-Gonzalez talked about data access and preservation in the face of disaster, discussing their experiences at the University of Puerto Rico. I was shocked to hear that only 3% of RAPID funding after Hurricanes Maria and Irma went to Puerto Rican researchers. While the lessons discussed about backups are relevant to folks everywhere, there is a definite urgency and responsibility to address unequal distribution of resources. During the semi-structured breaks, many attendees gathered to discuss how to build social justice into work as data librarians and related positions. I look forward to seeing discussions of access, justice, race, gender and more become integrated into all work at future conferences.

I had the opportunity to meet with colleagues from New England who are also members of New England Software Carpentry Library Consortium or NESCLiC [https://nesclic.github.io/home/]. The Carpentries is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide researchers with “the computing skills they need to get more done in less time and with less pain” NESCLiC is composed of 15 library folks who have been trained as instructors in Data and Software Carpentry through a consortium. Building capacity for services through collaboration was a clear theme throughout the conference.

I encourage other folks who are involved in research data in libraries, whether or not data librarian is their title, to attend! Thanks NEASIST for the support.

In the category of Student, we would like to congratulate Alyson Gamble, PhD student at Simmons College’s School of Library and Information Science! Gamble’s research is focused on biomedical informatics and UX testing, with the goal of improving access to medical information. At this year’s ASIS&T, Gamble looks forward to learning more about ethical issues in the field, meeting others who are working on related initiatives, and continuing to serve in leadership roles within the organization.

In the category of Professional, we would like to congratulate Tina McAndrew of the Westborough Public Library! Tina is the Technology and Technical Services Librarian for the Westborough Public Library. In this position Tina hopes to identify new trends in technology that she can offer to the people she serves. At the conference, Tina’s goal is to meet and create partnerships with other information professionals to learn more about how new technologies will provide equitable access to information.

A special thanks goes out to the team of volunteers who read through the essays for this year’s award. They are:

Last year we sent four New Englanders to the ASIS&T Annual Conference in Washington, DC (October 27 – November 1) with travel awards paid for out of the proceeds from our regional winter conference. We had awards for one practitioner, one student, and two awards for services to the local chapter awarded to the program committee co-chairs from last year. In this four-part series, they share their experiences at the conference with us.

Hello all! I attended the ASIS&T 2017 Annual Meeting: Diversity of Engagement: Connecting People and Information in the Physical and Virtual World as part of the Northeast Chapter Student Travel Award. As a doctoral student at Simmons College, it was my first time attending the conference and visiting wonderful Washington, DC. The conference was extremely meaningful for me. Not only did I have the chance to attend various presentations around my topic of interests but I had the opportunity to meet and get to know different leaders in the field. It was very exciting to meet in person the people who have shaped my knowledge in LIS and people I read in library school, like Marie L. Radford, Lisa M. Given, Nicole Cooke, among others.

Some of my favorite presentations were: “Engaging at the Margins: Theoretical and Philosophical Approaches to Social Justice”, “Addressing Barriers to Engaging with Marginalized Communities: Advancing Research on Information, Communication, and Technologies for Development”, and “Information Seeking Among Latinos in the Midwestern United States”. I had the opportunity to address questions to the panelists and gain more insights on these topics which I believe are the future of the LIS field.

Moreover, attending the meeting made me realized the variety of topics that are being discussed currently in the Information Science field which is my area of research in the Ph.D. program. I was delighted to meet so many people who are actively presenting and advancing research in diversity. Furthermore, I had the opportunity of meeting Denice Adkins and Nicole Cooke who have been my inspiration in pursuing my research area of serving marginalized and underserved communities.

I extend an invitation to all students to attend this wonderful conference; it is so much more than learning about emerging technologies in the field but learning about how to address broader and sensitive factors that might affect the way we do research and provide information services to the communities we serve. Also, my advice is don’t be shy, have fun and network all you can!

Last year we sent four New Englanders to the ASIS&T Annual Conference in Washington, DC (October 27 – November 1) with travel awards paid for out of the proceeds from our regional winter conference. We had awards for one practitioner, one student, and two awards for services to the local chapter awarded to the program committee co-chairs from last year. In this four-part series, they share their experiences at the conference with us.

As a practicing academic librarian at college that is very focused on professional majors and the practice of those professions, I’ve always identified more with the “library” portion of my M.L.I.S and the “information science” portion was something I engage in when I have time. Pretty much all the conferences I’ve attended have been focused on best practices within academic libraries and finding out ways to improve my day-to-day work. It was exciting to have won the Chapter Service Award which allowed me the opportunity to attend the ASIS&T Annual Meeting last fall – a conference that had a very definite information science and research bent. It was a fascinating experience to see the breadth of work information professionals do, the global network, and the implications of the research on so many disciplines and even on the government.

My somewhat messy notes on the various sessions can be found in my NEASIST Google Drive folder, but I would like to highlight a few of my favorite sessions and moments.

Fiction as Informative and its Implications for Information Science Theory. As a humanities major who has defected to the social sciences, I couldn’t resist this session. The presentation points out that there has been an emphasis on science and the technical in information science, and fiction has largely been ignored. However, people do inform themselves through the reading of fiction. There are many ways in which fiction can help readers develop an understanding of the wider world and allow them to develop empathy and affirm and contest social norms. So why not research this and expand the information science field? And do how certain fields are gendered play a role?

Global Human Trafficking Seen through the Lens of Semantics and Text Analytics. This session featured two examples of how information research can make a tremendous global impact. There was the use of text analysis on human trafficking stories in Kyrgyz to develop a knowledgebase of human trafficking in the country – targets, how the victims end up being trafficked, and destination countries. Another example involved a researcher working with the US Department of State to use semantic analysis to develop a profile that would help them organize reports of human trafficking. Between the US legal definition, legal definitions in other countries (written in different languages), and international standards, there are enough differences to complicate the process. As a result of this semantic profile, the government can reduce the amount of time organizing documents and focus on analyzing them.

Information Literacy in an Era of Information Uncertainty. The session covered information literacy in the academic library setting, information literacy skills of migrant workers, health literacy, and workplace literacy. The session was different from past information literacy sessions I’ve attended in that it was not so much about teaching literacy skills, but figuring out where the target audience is at in terms of literacy, and matching practices and interventions to convey information in a way that creates meaning for the audience.

Public Services or Private Gains: Motives Behind Participation on a Mobile Crowdsourcing Application in a Smart City. Several researchers from Singapore examined and categorized the various motives that drive use of mobile crowdsourcing platforms in smart cities. Figuring out how to drive participation can rebuild that social connection that has been eroding due to technology and meet the information needs of both residents and governments so that they can all be empowered to improve public services.

Technology as Humanism: the Next Digital Frontier. People have been speculating that books were in peril due to the prevalence of screens and other digital technologies. However, it is because of these screens and the resultant distractedness that there is a stronger need to disconnect, to seek quiet and order, and for books and paper to serve as an anchor for the consciousness. People are actively seeking out apps to help them disconnect and print is having a resurgence.

Poster Sessions. Poster sessions are the conference equivalents of buffets. I love getting a taste of so many different topics. There were of amazing posters and 90 minutes was definitely too short to visit them all properly. I took pictures of a few of the ones that caught my eye. They’re blurry, but they have enough information for anyone to follow up on.

Attending the conference with fellow NEASIST members. I’m usually sort of a loner at national conferences, so it was fantastic having Kate Nyhan, Annie Erdmann, Bill Lundmark, and Sylma Burgos with me, so we could gush and debrief about the amazing sessions we’ve attended and hang out together between and after sessions.

About the Awards: Professional/Practitioner and Student

The Association for Information Science & Technology, New England Chapter (NEASIS&T) is pleased to announce two awards to support participation in the ASIS&T Annual Meeting. Our goals are to support scholarship and connect research and practice, bringing new voices to the chapter. There is one student award and one practitioner award of $750 each. Each award will support your year-long membership in ASIS&T as well as your conference registration and part of your travel costs. What does that mean for you?

As an ASIS&T member, you’ll receive up to $750 for ASIS&T Annual.

As a student non-member, you’ll receive up to $710 for ASIS&T Annual; NEASIS&T will pay the $40 dues for your student ASIS&T membership.

As a non-member new information professional, you’ll receive up to $685 for ASIS&T Annual; NEASIS&T will pay the $65 dues for your transitional professional ASIS&T membership.

As a non-member professional, you’ll receive up to $610 for ASIS&T Annual; NEASIS&T will pay the $140 dues for your professional ASIST membership.

The ASIS&T Annual Meeting will take place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from Saturday, November 10 – Wednesday, November 14, 2018 and will be focused “building an ethical and sustainable information future with emerging technology.” For more information, you can visit theannual meeting webpage. It is still 9 months out from the annual meeting, so the schedule has not been fixed yet.

Eligibility & Applications

Applicants must be either current college or graduate students or practitioners in the field of information science at the time of their application and living and working in New England (ME, NH, VT, MA, RI, or CT) or New York. We define information science broadly: librarians, archivists, data/knowledge managers, information architects, web developers, etc., are all encouraged to apply. Applicants do not need to be current NEASIS&T members. However, award winners are expected to participate (in person or remotely) in NEASIS&T programming committee meetings in 2018-19.

Join NEASIS&T for a Happy Hour prior to the start of the RDAP conference! Unwind from a day of travel and meet your colleagues for a drink right in the Hilton Hotel!

ASIS&T supports many diverse communities, including Data Librarians. Join the New England Chapter for drinks and apps, and learn about other ways to support and become involved in the ASIS&T community. We welcome all conference attendees (not just those from New England) in hopes to facilitate and build regional connections to the larger association.

NEASIS&T Board Members Joshua and Julie will be there to talk about benefits of local chapter communities, and answer any questions you have.

We hope you join us for this pre-conference event! Drink and apps on us!

Last year we sent four New Englanders to the ASIS&T Annual Conference in Washington, DC (October 27 – November 1) with travel awards paid for out of the proceeds from our regional winter conference. We had awards for one practitioner, one student, and two awards for services to the local chapter awarded to the program committee co-chairs from last year. In this four-part series, they share their experiences at the conference with us.

In this installment, William Lundmark, recipient of the 2017 NEASIS&T Practitioner Travel Award recounts his experience. If you are interested in traveling to Vancouver this fall to attend ASIS&T Annual 2018, keep an eye out for this year’s travel award, which will be announced within the week!

Attending the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) was a most instructive and enjoyable experience for me, and I thank the New England chapter for supporting my travel expenses to Washington, D.C. As is true of professional conferences I’ve attended in the past, it is often difficult to choose among the sessions offered, and this year’s ASIS&T was no exception.

The opening plenary session with Richard Marks provided a fascinating insider’s look at the Sony Interactive development lab and the progress they are making with hyper-immersive virtual reality. Through VR, Mr. Marks demonstrated the value of the “play instinct” and how it might be harnessed for teaching and learning beyond the “gamification” trend.

Later that day, I attended a panel on “Evolving Traditions: From ‘Documentation’ to ‘Information Science & Technology,’” which began with a presentation on the multidisciplinary development of Library and Information Science, describing the early broad vs. narrow conceptions of the Humanities and Sciences respectively, and the historical quest for a “unifying theory” or umbrella concept. This was followed by a biographical sketch of pioneer information scientist, James Perry, and ended with a retracement of the development of the taxonomy through the centuries.

Of particular interest to health sciences librarians like myself was a discussion by Jeannine Turner and Theresa Horton on the changing nature of physician-patient communications. These are no longer a mere transmission of information but have become a translation that now acknowledges and incorporates the patient’s expertise about themselves, their lives, and their habits. I also attended a wide-ranging panel discussion on “Digital Literacy in the Era of Fake News” which had an illuminating Q&A session featuring Alex Kasprak, science writer for fact check site, Snopes.com. The undergraduate literature major in me most enjoyed the presentation by the Univ. of Austin’s Phil Doty on “Fiction as Informative and Its Implications for Information Science Theory,” examining how reading fiction, poetry, drama and the like are profoundly information seeking behaviors, wherein we learn values, empathy, social norms, and make meaning of our own lives and experiences. Prof. Doty contends that this is an area of information science study that has been grossly ignored.

Finally, I would be remiss not to mention the second plenary session with author William Powers of the MIT Media Lab and his presentation on “Technology as Humanism: the Next Digital Frontier.” Reflecting philosophically on his own experiences, Mr. Powers made the case that increased technological connectedness has not facilitated increased human connectedness in our society. Just as the availability of vast amounts of information cannot be equated with an increase in knowledge, so being connected all the time via our smart phones and other devices does not translate into attaining a deeper place of meaning in human relations. In fact, our screens are taking away more than they are adding to our human relationships, constantly distracting us, limiting our attention spans and direct, face-to-face interactions.

But, most important of all, was the opportunity afforded by the conference to become acquainted with other like-minded individuals from the region and, indeed, from around the world. In particular, I most enjoyed the company of Kate Nyhan and Louisa Choy, the current co-chairs of NEASIS&T, with much appreciation for their guidance in navigating my first ASIS&T conference. I look forward to working with them this coming year as the new chapter Treasurer and making our organization a better resource for all of our members.

About the Stipends:

The Association for Information Science & Technology, New England Chapter (NEASIS&T) is pleased to announce three stipends to offset some costs of participation in the Research Data Access & Preservation (RDAP) Summit. Our goals are to support scholarship and connect research and practice, bringing new voices to RDAP and to our chapter.

NEASIS&T is offering three stipends of $300 each. What does that mean for you?

As an ASIS&T member, you’ll receive $300 for RDAP.

As a student, you’ll receive $260 for RDAP; NEASIS&T will pay the $40 dues for your student ASIS&T membership.

As a new information professional, you’ll receive $235 for RDAP; NEASIS&T will pay the $65 dues for your transitional professional ASIS&T membership.

As a professional, you’ll receive $160 for RDAP; NEASIS&T will pay the $140 dues for your professional ASIS&T membership.

ASIS&T supports many diverse communities, hosting events such as the Research Data Access & Preservation (RDAP) Summit. Held in conjunction with the Information Architecture (IA) Summit, RDAP explores themes such as open data, data infrastructure, metadata, and data preservation. The RDAP community brings together a variety of individuals, including data managers and curators, librarians, archivists, researchers, educators, students, technologists, and data scientists from academic institutions, data centers, funding agencies, and industry who represent a wide range of STEM disciplines, social sciences, and humanities. The RDAP Summit will take place in Chicago, IL from March 21 – 23, 2018. For more information, you can visit the RDAP meeting webpage.

Eligibility & Applications

Applicants must be graduate students, researchers, or practitioners in the field of information science and living and working in New England at the time of their application. We define information science broadly: librarians, archivists, data/knowledge managers, information architects, web developers, etc., are all encouraged to apply. Applicants do not need to be current NEASIS&T members.

To apply, please send an e-mail to neasist@gmail.com and include your name, employer, city, and state.

Terms of Stipends

Each stipend winner will be welcomed into our New England regional chapter. As a travel stipend winner, you must:

Live and work in New England

Meet with a NEASIS&T leader at RDAP

Share your conference experience with the NEASIS&T chapter through a blog post due by April 15th, 2018

Participate in a NEASIS&T meet-up based on the winners’ professional interests

Submit receipts documenting travel- and conference-related expenses, such as registration, airfare, food, and lodging, up to the value of the award

NEASIS&T will send stipends to the recipients after receiving the blog post and receipts.

*If a winner is unable to meet all of the terms due to a relocation, NEASIS&T should be notified immediately.

Looking forward to seeing so many of you at our conference on Monday, January 8, 2018! If you haven’t had a chance to register, go to our Eventbrite!

Here is the schedule of events:

Understanding and Using APIs
Finding ways to connect information is one of our biggest challenges. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are sets of requirements that govern how one application can talk to another and share data. These capabilities are great for library users and researchers, as well as librarians and staff! Our morning speakers are experts in APIs, and through them you’ll understand what APIs are and learn the practical uses of how APIs can enhance your data. In the afternoon session, you’ll see hands-on demonstrations and learn about API tools you can bring back to your organization.

Beginners are welcome and encouraged! This is a great chance to see how other librarians are using APIs, and to figure out which applications are useful for you in your organization. And if you already use APIs, here’s a great chance to find a community of practice.

Program8:00 | Coffee and Networking

Morning Keynotes

9:00 | Getting Started with APIs

Amber Stubbs, Assistant Professor, Simmons College

10:15 | Enhancing Content Discovery through APIs

Rob O’Connell, Director of Discovery and Access, Smith College Library

Rob O’Connell has been the Director of Discovery and Access at Smith College since 2013. He was previously the Head of Technical Services at Higher Colleges of Technology in the United Arab Emirates. Rob has been working with APIs and discovery systems for the past 10 years and has created several tools based on their architecture including Smith College’s new bento box interface.

Jeff Steward directs the museums on the use of a wide range of digital technology. He oversees the collections database, API, and photography studio. For the opening of the new Harvard Art Museums in November 2014, he helped launch the Lightbox Gallery, a public research and development space. Steward has worked at museums with museum data since 1999. Areas of research include visualization of cultural datasets; open access to metadata and multimedia material; and data interoperability and sustainability.

Martha Meacham – E-utilities from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (the people behind PubMed)We’re sorry to announce that this E-utilities demo is canceled, as of 1/5/18. For people who are interested in this resource, there will be some self-guided activities to explore.